The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-05-28
A SOUTHERN RESORT.
How Blount Springs is Soon to Become
 the Saratoga of the New South.
BY THOMAS P. GRAsTY.

were princes, Blount Springs was sought by seekers of health and pleas ure from every principality in King Cotton's vast and rich domain. But of late years the place has been per- mitted to drift toward the lonesome limits of innocuous desuetude." However, the day of its redemption is at hand tor the same men who made the great Sloss furnace beacon light to Birmingham, are about to rescue Blount Springs from impending ob- livion and convert it into the most magnificently appointed watering place in all America. And the won- der is not that so magical a transfor- nation is about to transpire, but that so magical combination of healing waters, in so matchless a location, should have remained half improved a single season, much more these score of years. A
 There are sllbusands of people all over the south that think of Blount Springs only with gratitude and name its waters only to praise them. I have always wanted to visit the place, and so when, early in April, during my stay in Birmingham, l happened in the office of the Sloss brothers, and there happened to see a plan of a huge hotel that they told me was speedily to be built "at Blount," and when, that very even- ing, heard my friend Major Handley tell about the fine trout he had taken out of the Mulberry river, it struck me all at once that needed some rus tic rest. and I decided that if the trains kept on the track, l would sleep "at Blount" that very night.
 And there I slept-not the fitful cat-nap of you who breathe the fetid atmosphere of malarial bottOms-but the sweet, unbroken, soothing slum- Der nowhere obtainable in this weary, wicked world save in that pure, unsullied maiden air, fresh forth from heaven, whose first greet ing to earth has just been given as it kisses the tree-tops of the untrod mountain crest. And there is mo- where on this continent such topOg- raphy for fresh air as at these springs, which gush from the little end of a vast air funnel whose bulge is made by mighty mountains, free from every vestige of contamination. And so it happens that breeze prevails every day and every hour in all the livelong summer. No matter how sultry it may be elsewhere, this breeze blows fresh and cool here at Blount Springs.
 In connection with this. it is to be regretted that SO many people hug the delusion that latitude determines summer temperature, and must needs go to the far north to escape the sul- triness of a southern summer. The truth is, and every intelligent person ought to know, that in July and August it is often hotter in Maine or Canada than even in New Orleans, while in the mountains of Alabama it is always from ten to twenty degrees cooler than on the Atlantic seaboard. For instance, on the memorable day when President Garfield was moved from Washington to Elberon, the temperature at the latter point ranged from 100 to lo4 degrees, while at Blount Springs it reached only eighty eight degrees, which, with one excep- tion, was the highest that has been know there for many years. was informed by the resident physician that the temperature at no northern watering place was SO low as here in the daytime, while the nights are always comfortably cool At some resorts there is such a wide difference between the heat of day and the cold of night as to be productive of rheu- matism and other serions disorders. There is no such unwkolesome varia- ton here.
 The mountains around these springs are five hundred feet above the track of the Louisville & Nashville railroad,